Part of the “Do you really know...?” fraud series (Businesses Edition), from the Economic and Cyber Crime Prevention Centre

Every company, irrespective of its size of the sector it operates in, is a target for fraudsters. Unfortunately, that threat sometimes comes in the form of employees from within your organisation.

Insider fraud occurs when someone uses their position within an organisation to steal money or information. Whether it is the theft of confidential business documents, fraudulently increasing purchasing order values, or intentionally over-claiming on expenses, these are all types of insider fraud.

As well as the financial losses, the damage to your company's reputation and the loss of trust from customers can be devastating.

From bogus ‘Computer Software Tech Support’ phone calls, e.g. someone from Microsoft or Apple contacting you and telling you there is a problem with your device, to fraudsters asking for credit card information to ‘validate your software’, e.g. validate your windows software, there are a number of computer software service scams you need to look out for.

Fraudsters often use the names of well-known companies to commit their crime, as it makes their communication with you seem more legitimate. This is why it’s important to think twice before giving out any personal information.

Malware is malicious software that consists of programming, for example code or scripts, designed to disrupt the performance of PCs, laptops, handheld devices, etc.

Malware can also collect information or data from infected devices and pass them on to another device. Malware is often referred to as viruses, worms, trojan horses, spyware, dishonest adware, scareware, and crimeware.

Phishing is the attempt to acquire sensitive information, for example usernames, passwords and credit card details or steal money by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication such as email, pop-up message, phone call or text message.

The most common phishing scam purported to be either from a bank or from HMRC followed by online payment merchants and utility companies.

With the development of new technology, original crimes 'of the streets' are developing also, and heading online. To put this into perspective, according to the Office of National Statistics, over a four month period, approximately 5.1 million incidents of 'online fraud' was recorded, and a further 2.5 million incidents of crimes which fell under the Computer Misuse Act.

To better protect ourselves, ActionFraud have developed the 'PROTECT' scheme.

Public Wi-Fi is something that most of us in the UK are reliant on and there is now thought to be 269,000 Wi-Fi hotspots in the UK compared with the 202,944 that were available in 2014. However there is a lack of awareness about cyber hacking and how cyber criminals use public Wi-Fi as a means to steal personal and financial details from individuals and businesses via pubic networks.